


Circumstances

by prickledheart



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (kind of), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Downward Spiral, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Not sure what's going to happen yet, Only from Five's POV, Projection, Trans Character, yikes bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 13:16:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18195089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prickledheart/pseuds/prickledheart
Summary: An act of rebellion, a mistake, driving him away for almost an eternity- a lifetime, at least, for him.He was working under the Commission, seeing people walking, talking, breathing (and dying), but he was a stranger- to anyone and everyone, including himself. A bullet, a gun, and the mechanism with which to fire- all three, and it hardly felt worthy for the trade, to lose himself over and over and over again in such a fashion.





	Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately, I've become enthralled with the show and utterly obsessed with Five- the ultimate power fantasy, my favorite child, and who I, naturally, desperately need to become. Enjoy.
> 
> [Working title- 'five said trans rights!'; the fic may or may not be at all focused on this. Not even I know. Current title subject to change, pulled out of my ass just so I could post this and then pass out. The usual.]

If you think about it, there is irony in every aspect of his life. While being somewhat of a miracle, one among forty three, he’d been treated like he’d been sent from hell itself, pushed and pulled and pounded by whatever training his father deemed best- and that, a means to control, led him to lose it. An act of rebellion, a mistake, driving him away for almost an eternity- a lifetime, at least, for him.

There was a distinct difference between the three he lived: One, he was a gear in a machine, working with his siblings for the amount of time he’d been present to put ‘good’ into the world- or to at least take bad out of it. Second, he was all but alone- a mannequin wasn’t much if you could even call her something, but Five learned to cut his losses when he could (and even at this point, he had amounted far too many). Third, was some sort of middle ground- not quite alone, yet not at all part of a team. Sure, he was working under the Commission, seeing people walking, talking, breathing (and dying), but he was a stranger- to anyone and everyone, including himself. A bullet, a gun, and the mechanism with which to fire- all three, and it hardly felt worthy for the trade, to lose himself over and over and over again in such a fashion.

There’s no place for self doubt, though, in any sense- he’d come too far. Even if professional contracts, the murders would stay on his hands forever; there was no point in trying to return to his old self, feeble and foolish and all too unknowing, so the only thing worth it was to trudge forward, in the haze he was living for what was, in some way or another, his purpose.

The goal was far more important than him. Even if the world wasn’t ending, his before had- and even if his own hadn’t, everything and everyone he ever knew or could ever knew soon would. Five owed it to those of his not-so blood to try to fix things, either way; no sense of morality has pushed him to save the world, just the means to call it a disaster and the slight possibility to avoid it so.

A lifetime of calculations, of numbers and writing and drinking until a mannequin berated him- shooting idle men and leaving others to die; this was all for a reason. He wouldn’t put himself through it otherwise. Call it a sense of family obligation, that would be understandable- a sense of loneliness and longing for the family he lost would be more accurate, though he’d never admit it was his own selfishness.

~~In a way, it really wasn’t- yes, he missed them, but this wasn’t just about him. It never really was. He’d say it’s bigger than all of them anyway, if asked; because that, in honest integrity, was the truth.~~

Coming through the vortex, finding his family- this was what he had hoped for, expected even. Landing as a child, once again in this form, was not. A laughable outcome at best, almost cruel, if not exactly malicious. The exaction of justice: some way of karma finding him and returning back all the energy and actions he’d dished out. 

It’s just calculations, math and physics and nothing more- he knows it is. Logically, he got the equation wrong somewhere, but it’s a mistake nonetheless, and he feels it.

“Does anyone else see little number Five?” A glance up- yes, there they are. “Or is that just me?”

There is no time to return an answer or a witty remark, none other than to process how large his sleeves were, the now loose pants he adorned, and the weight settling on his shoulders the same time that the realization did.

_”Shit.”_

-

By the time anyone has words to say to him, they’re all sitting at the kitchen table, watching him throw carbs and sugar together like it’s been any other day. To them, it’s the twenty-fourth of March, as detailed by Vanya, and they can’t wrap their head around him being there. It’s all questions of, ‘where’d you go,’ and, ‘how did you get back,’ which, considering, are valid questions for them to ask; but it’s irritating, knowing what he knows, when they don’t listen well if at all.

Rattling off answers that don’t seem to make a difference to them, he details that, it’s been quite a longer time for him than it has been for them. It is, of course, followed by another question; but he doesn’t blame them. It’s odd for him, too, to be back- it’s only natural for any of them to be curious. 

“How long were you there?”

“Forty-five years, give or take,” is his denomination, given just a moment before he bites into his newly crafted stomach ache.

It would be an incredibly hilarious statement to anyone not in the loop, but even to his family, it seems they’ve taken it so alien. 

Luther, once again, speaks: “So what’re you saying, you’re 58?” 

Five tells them, that even if he’s changed in a conscientious sense, he’s reverted back to the previous physical form he held- “the equations were off,” is probably all they can understand from his bread-filled mouth. He’s unconvincing, when he tells them just that, and given he’s thirteen again and lacking in manners as he chews while he speaks, he gets where they’re coming from in their confusion and unease- but it’s not his matter, and Five doesn’t even care to turn when Allison tries to call him back.

“What else is there to say? The circle of life.” He knows it well.

-

It’s oddly comforting to take the stairs, one by one, to get to his room. He’s done so much jumping around, in both the sense of finally time traveling back as well as just in general, so the luxury of ease is nice. 

He reaches his room before long, he’s never struggled with stairs and wouldn’t now, even at the ripe age of 58 (he laughs inwardly at that, for a moment) and goes straight through his closet. Though, Five isn’t sure what he’s expecting- half of him thinks maybe there should be ‘normal’ clothes, but the other half isn’t at all surprised when the only pieces present are his old uniforms. It makes sense, when he thinks about it for a moment, and he pulls on the top pieces easily, tightens his tie with precision, but hovers at the bottom.

A skirt isn’t really in his wardrobe anymore- it might be, if he wasn’t literally regressed to a state way back when, but now, knowing what he does, seeing how he’s coming across, well- he doesn’t want to feel that kind of confliction, even if he knows the truth.

Five’s pants really are too big though- and he has an image to uphold, so he swaps them out for the skirt anyway. It’s snug as a bug and it doesn’t exactly bother him how breezy it is, nor does it that he’s a boy wearing a skirt (he had told Klaus he had a nice dress and meant it earlier, too), but… 

With a breathe, he makes the quick decision to ask Pogo or Grace, whichever he finds first, to find him one of his siblings old pants- if his uniforms are still here, then theirs have to be too.

Since Five is having to adapt, he decides, if he finds their Mother, that he’ll ask her to cut his hair for him; if it’s Pogo, he’ll just chop it himself in the bathroom. Not like he’d never given himself a cut, but it’d be choppy at best- the apocalypse never gave him much need to look nice for anyone beside Delores anyway.

-

While he’s feeling refreshed after eating and changing into actually fitting and less rumpled clothes, Five still doesn’t feel like performing spatial jumps just for ease- it was one thing to get around Luther in the kitchen, but poofing in and out around the house was going to get him: a. many questions and: b. exhausted, pretty quickly. So, he resolves to place one foot in front of the other and re-learn the house he almost grew up in.

It’s sort of unfair, he thinks, to find himself looking at the exact person he wasn’t. 

The portrait isn’t bad, if Five is being fair; of course, if he wasn’t being fair, it’d still be objectively accurate and his opinion would mean nothing, but by all means, their father had the money for nice things, and if the solid mirror he’s looking back at held any value, it was an example.

A creep behind him almost startles him- the way the footsteps are placed, soft but not sneaky, are reminiscent enough that he finds himself letting out a breathe he didn’t realize he held.

“I read your book, you know.” Five looks away from the painting, letting his eyes settle on nothing in particular. “Found it in a library that was still standing.” 

His sister is silent, so he continues.

“I thought it was pretty good,” he begins turning away from the visage to face her, “all things considered.” The way his hair follows, far too long and sweeping, irritates him, but he pushes away the urge to ask for the tie Vanya has her own hair pulled back in. “Definitely ballsy, giving up the family secrets. Sure that went over well.”

Something in his mind tells him he should feel bad for that last piece, but he blames it only on her shudder that there’s a slight guilt. “They hate me.”

“There are worse things that can happen.”

She brings up Ben, and they don’t really talk about it- Vanya only confirms it was _bad_ , and it hangs.

-

Five decides to ask for her hair tie after all. Fortunately, Vanya carries a few extra, a commodity thing that she doesn’t have to explain and he tunes out- he feels slightly better, with the hair out of the way and contained. Though tries to pretend the slight force of the hair tie doesn’t keep him thinking about his features, it does, and it’s irritating. 

Five stows the feeling until the funeral, where Pogo and Grace finally make an appearance, but he decides, after Diego remarks their Mother needs to rest, that the haircut can wait. It’s not this that makes him blow up, nor Klaus lighting a cigarette next to him (which he makes a show to crinkle his nose at), but the fighting that, as he figured it would, eventually ensues between the first two brothers. 

Luther and Diego have always been quick to push each other's buttons, competing as gold and silver do, but Five doesn’t have time for this, and so he pushes past Klaus and gets moving. He doesn’t have all day, after all- he barely has all week, and at the pace everyone else is processing it (let alone how they’re treating each other), he might as well be stopping the apocalypse alone.

-

First, though, he needs caffeine. It’s become a lifeblood, probably a dangerous dependency, but there can (and have been, and will continue to be) worse things to develop an addiction to, right? 

Speaking of addiction- while everyone else disperses, Klaus sticks with him. While Five is filtering through every cupboard and drawer their kitchen has, his brother just sits there, offering no help, just waving his cigarette as carefree as can be. 

(It makes sense. He hasn’t told any them- they don’t know, not yet.)

Five is about to decide to leave when Allison announces her presence with a question, asking about Vanya- it’s not particularly good to find out that she’s gone, but it’s good to keep tabs on them all. They’ll need all of them for what’s coming, considering that the other four living members were powerless in the wake of… whatever it was that caused the end of times in the first place.

By the time the exchange is over between his brother and sister, about three seconds give or take, he’s made up his mind: “That’s unfortunate,” is his opener, accompanied by Allison’s misplaced ‘yeah.’ 

“An entire square block, forty-two bedrooms, nineteen bathrooms-“ He slams the french press he’s holding onto the table to get his frustration through- “But no, not a single drop of caffeine.”

The way his siblings glance at each other (or, more Allison glances at Klaus- who’s still wearing her dress, apparently) and then look back at him, it’s clear they’re forming some new opinions. 

“Dad hated caffeine,” Allison begins, and Klaus finishes the conversation with: 

“Well, he hated children, too, and he had plenty of us.” 

The tide shifts and it’s Allison looking at him to confirm Klaus is odd, which he doesn’t respond to, because he speaks the truth either way. 

“I’m taking the car,” is all Five says in response. He doesn’t have the time, patience, nor caffeine level for this.

“Where are you going?” is the question Klaus poses, though Five doesn’t like the tone in it.

Pointedly, to shut down any bright ideas of his, he answers: “To get a decent cup of coffee.”

“Do you even know how to drive?” is the next question, and Five half begins to think he shouldn’t come back. 

It’s an impulsive thought he shuts down immediately, but he still lashes out. “I know how to do everything.” As if to prove a point, he jumps away from the scene- to just outside the kitchen threshold, granted, but it’s to save all of them from anymore unpleasantness in the conversation.

Five’s stills his pace away when he hears, just barely, Klaus speak. “I feel like we should try and stop her- but then again, I also kind of just want to see what happens.’

If Allison responds, Five is no longer within earshot to hear her- instead, he's reappeared in a blue light in the car, and he’s headed to better pursuits.

Five knows if Delores was there, she’d comment on his grip on the steering wheel.

(He, alone, tries not to think about it.)

-

By the time he gets to the Griddy’s Doughnuts, he’s beyond agitated; but knowing the antidote is within a few more minutes of holding it together, Five decides to just park the car (albeit not well) instead of crash it and head inside unharmed.

It isn’t more than a minute after he dings their bell before the server comes out, but the older woman still apologizes to him and the trucker sitting next to him nonetheless. 

‘There’s no need,’ he’s about to say, but the woman, _Agnes, her nametag denotes,_ speaks instead, asking, “What’ll it be?”

The man asks for an eclair, and while Five considers ordering something of the sort, he had an objective to complete- that, and he had already eaten a marshmallow mess earlier and felt the need to balance it out. Caffeine would do him better than sugar, anyway.

“Can I get the kid a glass of milk or something?” He’s almost irritated by it, but he knows what he looks like- still, Five holds no tongue for anyone.

“The kid wants coffee.” They both turn to look at him, giving him an odd sense of deja vu. “Black.” There’s no mood to kill, but if there was, Five would absolutely have been the perpetrator. 

Agnes smiles awkwardly to say, “Cute kid,” but her tone betrays what she projects.The little laugh at the end is unconvincing too, and either way, her face is too easy to read. In contrast, the man beside him doesn’t at all try to hide how he feels- he just looks at Five, and he returns them with a pearly white smile. Unnerving and out of place, practiced just so, and they’re both clearly uncomfortable. 

_’Good,’_ he thinks, as Agnes retreats to the coffee pot with nothing more than an odd inhale.

“Don’t remember this place being such a shithole,” Five muses, looking around. It’s not quite a wreck, but it’s empty even for the time of night, and it’s not exactly in it’s prime anymore. “I used to come here as a kid, used to sneak out with my brothers and sisters-” He pauses to take a sip of his coffee- “and eat doughnuts till we puked.” 

He turns to look at the other man. 

“Simpler times, huh?”

“Uh, I suppose.” The exchange in both words and goods is over when the man pays both their tabs. “I got hers,” he says, handing cash to Agnes, and Five does nothing more but raise his eyebrows into his coffee.

Then, he sees the man's shirt- or rather, the label on it. “You must know your way around the city.” He doesn’t care to ask about the mans backstory, or even bother to ask if Ishmael is his name like any curious, trying to be considerate person would, instead he says: “I need an address.”

-

He doesn’t even get halfway through his coffee before the guns hired to kill him come- of course, he’d been expecting it, but it was still unpleasant.

“That was fast,” Five says, not caring to look back at them. He’s casual in a real sense- there’s no need to worry about lousy henchmen when he had spatial jumps, and even if he didn’t, he’s a trained assassin at this point, and he could always adapt. “I thought I had more time.”

-

As he walks away from the scene, Five decides he needs to reinvent himself. It’s not like he’s been phased- it’s fine that everyone sees him as a child, he gets it, he _understands_ \- but this still isn’t who he is.

_”You think I want to shoot a little girl? I don’t want that on my conscience.”_

It’s easier to take his rage out on those who deserve it, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Just like my life, I have no idea where this fic is going- but it's fun to abuse caffeine, right?
> 
> I don't have a beta or an ounce of coherency, but let me know what you think regardless. Feedback fuels the beast- as does Monster, but yikes.
> 
> May draw up concepts of Five if anyone is interested, btw.


End file.
